Pamela Geller was a participant or observer in the following events:

One of the digital artifacts scanned from Barack Obama’s birth certificate and digitally manipulated by ‘Techdude.’ [Source: Dr. Neal Krawetz]A blogger calling himself “Techdude” writes a “final report” for the conservative blog Atlas Shrugs that, he claims, proves Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s digitally scanned copy of his birth certificate (see June 13, 2008) is a fraud, regardless of the recent validation of the copy by PolitiFact (see June 27, 2008) and the discovery of a printed birth announcement from a Honolulu newspaper (see July 2008). The proprietor of Atlas Shrugs, Pamela Geller, refuses to name “Techdude,” but claims “he is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, the International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association,” and other unnamed organizations. He is, Geller claims, a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. “Techdude“‘s report begins with complaints that unnamed Obama supporters have recently vandalized his car and hung a dead rabbit on his front door “in a lame attempt to intimidate me from proceeding with releasing any details of my analysis.” The attempt at “intimidation” did not work, “Techdude” proclaims, and he then releases his detailed analysis of the certificate. Although he refuses to release any information about the supposed actual Hawaiian birth certificates he used for his comparisons, “because of the amazing number of violent psychopaths who seem to be drawn to this issue,” he says comparison between the digital scan of Obama’s certificate and the “actual” certificates he claims to have in his possession show critical differences between them. “Techdude” says, among other things: The borders of the real certificates differ from those on the Obama certificate; The measurements of the real certificates differ from those of the Obama certificate; The digital scan shows evidence that the information was “overlain” onto a piece of security paper; The digital scan shows artifacts that could only come from Photoshop manipulation; The typography shows differences in “kerning,” or the spacing between characters, between the scan and the authentic documents. “Techdude” concludes that the digital scan was produced by someone obtaining a real Hawaii birth certificate, soaking it in solvent, and then reprinting it with the desired information. [Atlas Shrugs, 7/20/2008] Computer forensics expert Dr. Neal Krawetz later examines “Techdude“‘s analysis and determines it to be completely specious. The analysis, Krawetz will determine, has been deliberately manipulated to produce false results. “TechDude did not make amateur mistakes,” Krawetz will conclude. “Instead, he intentionally manipulated the data so that it would support his theory.” [Neal Krawetz, 8/4/2008; Hacker Factor, 2011]

Screenshot of Pamela Geller during an appearance on Fox News. [Source: Conservative News Watch (.org)]Pamela Geller, who owns the far-right blog Atlas Shrugs, posts a long, intricate screed from Rudy Schulz that claims President Obama could not have been born in Hawaii, because his mother Stanley Ann Dunham was attending classes at the University of Washington at the time. Schulz also states his belief, supported by a large amount of supposition and exposition but no real facts, that Obama forged his Hawaiian birth certificate to hide his true father: slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. The claim that Dunham was attending classes in Washington State at the time of his birth was first promoted on conservative news blog WorldNetDaily by author Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), who stated, “How Dunham was able to travel the 2,680 air miles from Honolulu to Seattle only a few days after the birth of her baby is not disclosed in the currently available public record concerning President Obama’s birth.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/4/2009] Evidence that Dunham registered for classes at the University of Washington in mid-August 1961, but actually arrived in Washington to begin her coursework in September 1961, with infant Barack in tow, is ignored by Corsi, Schulz, and Geller. [Seattle Times, 2/5/2008] After Geller receives a barrage of criticism and mockery over the “Malcolm X” claim, she updates the original blog post to read: “The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the far left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did—but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008]

Pamela Geller, who owns and operates the far-right blog Atlas Shrugs, continues to claim that “forensic analysis” performed on President Obama’s birth certificate by a blogger on her site she calls “Techdude” proves the certificate is forged, even though independent analysis has long since proven that “Techdude’s” analysis was fraudulent (see July 20, 2008). She claims that the analysis was never subjected to “peer review,” ignoring a review and analysis by an actual computer forensics expert, Dr. Neal Krawetz, who showed how cunningly “Techdude” manipulated the data to produce his fraudulent results. Nevertheless, Geller continues to say that her blog’s analysis “proves” Obama’s birth certificate, as posted on his Web site (see June 13, 2008), confirmed by Hawaiian officials (see October 30, 2008), and independently analyzed and verified as accurate (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), is “an altered document.” Geller claims that a year after her blog “exposed” the birth certificate, the “birther” issue “is on fire. Why? Perhaps because the American people, in their sudden desperation at having made a shotgun wedding, are looking for an annulment. And just as you couldn’t get Al Capone on his heinous crimes of murder and racketeering, but got him on tax evasion, so they hope they can get Obama on this technicality regarding eligibility. Obama’s refusal to release the vault copy has only increased interest, with the speculation now creating a veritable birth certificate circus.” Geller speculates that the recent release of an obviously fraudulent “Kenyan birth certificate” (see August 1-4, 2009) is the result of “something more sinister at work,” perhaps a “psyop” by either Obama administration officials or Obama’s supporters “to smear the Republicans in general as ‘birthers,’ conspiracy nuts who have given themselves over to right-wing nuttery.” Conservatives, she writes, are the victim of the birth certificate conspiracy, and Obama is entirely to blame for not releasing what she calls the “vault copy” (see July 1, 2009), “whether because it contains something damaging or simply because it enables him to wield the weapon of ridicule against the right. At this point, the effect is the same regardless of which of those possibilities is true. This carnival of conspiracy has become a deliberate distraction from the real issues and the real destruction being wrought by the Obama administration.” [NewsMax, 8/4/2009]

Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind, writing for their organization Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), examine the role of “nativism” in the ideology of “tea party” members in a multi-part IREHR report (see August 24, 2010). (The Free Dictionary defines “nativists” as having “a sociopolitical policy… favoring the interests of established inhabitants over those of immigrants,” and favoring “[t]he reestablishment or perpetuation of native cultural traits, especially in opposition to acculturation.”) According to Burghart and Zeskind, many members and leaders of various “tea party” organizations are convinced that President Obama is not a “native-born” American, has never produced a valid birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), and is not a valid American citizen. They write that the idea “that Barack Obama is not a real American, but a ‘lying African,’ is… found across the entirety of the tea party movement. Hundreds of posts echoing these sentiments are on the Tea Party Nation Web site.” Since the first tea party protests in April 2009, they write: “those who do not believe that President Obama is a native born American have been widely visible. They have claimed he was a Muslim instead of a Christian, that he was born in Kenya or Indonesia, rather than in Hawaii. And that Barack Obama was a non-American socialist who conspiratorially slipped into the White House.” Characterizations that the tea party movement is based almost solely on economic concerns are belied by the strong threads of social conservatism, including “nativism,” evident in tea party ideology (see August 16, 2011). Conservative activists such as Pamela Geller, the authors note, have fueled tea party nativism and anti-Muslim/anti-immigrant stances. Geller is, the authors claim, a classic “Islamophobe,” expressing what a 1997 study by the Runnymede Trust termed an “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” Geller has frequently spoken at tea party events, often declaiming about the “threat” Muslims pose to America. Geller’s three “organizational fronts,” as Burghart and Zeskind call them, are her blog, “Atlas Shrugs,” and her two groups, SIOA (Stop Islamization of America) and the Freedom Defense Initiative. All are listed as official “partner” organizations of the ResistNet Tea Party faction. Geller is also a “birther” (see October 24, 2008, August 4, 2009, April 27, 2011, and April 29, 2011) who believes Obama is a “third worlder and a coward” who is “appeas[ing] his Islamic overlords.” Many tea party organizations also support anti-immigration legislation; Burghart and Zeskind cite a July 29 decision by the National Leadership Council of Tea Party Patriots to support Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration bill, SB1070. The largest umbrella tea party organization, the 1776 Tea Parties, holds as two of its “non-negotiable beliefs” that “illegal aliens are illegal” and “English only is required.” The 1776 Tea Parties also support Arizona’s SB1070, and has as members of its board two members of the violently anti-immigrant Minuteman Project. The tea party groups’ support for “birtherism” and nativist ideology has caused “something of a rift” between the groups and FreedomWorks, the lobbying organization that has funded the groups since their inception (see April 8, 2009 and April 14, 2009). Tea party members have targeted FreedomWorks founder Dick Armey over his limited support for pro-immigrant reform; one Tenneessee tea party organizer recently wrote, “I think we should tar-and-feather Dick Armey.” Conservative blogger and activist Michelle Malkin, a vocal supporter of the tea party groups, has called Armey an “amnesty stooge.” Tea party organizer Roy Beck of anti-immigration organization NumbersUSA recently wrote that Armey “wants immigration to be treated as a social issue with no place in the tea parties,” and suggested FreedomWorks may be trying “to intimidate local tea parties” to stay away from the issue at the behest of “corporate benefactors [who] want the foreign labor to keep pouring in.” Congress members such as Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and others in Bachmann’s House Tea Party Caucus are strongly anti-immigrant. And 42 of the 51 Tea Party Caucus members also belong to the House Immigration Reform Caucus, which supports blocking any immigration reform that would give illegal residents a pathway to citizenship. Burghart and Zeskind write, “Opposition to ‘birthright citizenship’ extends throughout the tea party movement, and is often linked to an explicit fear of the demographic transformation underway in the United States, in which white people are projected to become one minority in a country of minorities during the next several decades.” ResistNet’s state director in Alabama, Jason Leverette, recently wrote of his fear that whites (“real Americans”) were being “out-bred” by “Mexicans” who want to take over the nation and “rule America! If this trend continues… by 2050 the United States will be ruled by Hosea Jesus Delgado Gonzalez Calderon, Esq. WTF!” Burghart and Zeskind conclude, “It is here, at the conjunction of nativism, opposition to birthright citizenship, the denigration of President Obama, and the fear of the new majority in American life, that the unstated racism embedded within the tea parties becomes vocal and unmistakable.” [The Free Dictionary, 2009; Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, 10/19/2010]

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News talk show, guest Tamara Holder, a Fox legal analyst, speculates why President Obama has not “released” his “real” birth certificate (see June 13, 2008, June 27, 2008, July 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, July 1, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 28, 2009, July 29, 2009, April 11, 2011, and April 25, 2011). “I would say that maybe there’s something on there that he doesn’t want people to know,” she says. When Hannity asks her what that might be, she responds: “Like who his father is. Maybe that the father isn’t listed on the birth certificate. That is my only idea.” The progressive media watchdog Media Matters equates Holder’s speculation with radical-right eccentric Andy Martin’s announcement that Obama was “fathered” by a black Muslim activist with Communist ties (see Before October 27, 2008), or blogger Pamela Geller’s speculation that Obama’s father might be civil rights activist Malcolm X (see October 24, 2008). The Media Matters analysis concludes with the observation, “Meanwhile, in the real world, the certification of live birth issued by the state of Hawaii does list a father: Barack Obama Sr.” [Media Matters, 4/27/2011]

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller, who for years has stirred the “birther” controversy surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate (see July 20, 2008, October 24, 2008, and August 4, 2009), appears on Fox Business Channel to discuss the release of President Obama’s “long form” certificate (see April 27, 2011). Using a poster-size reproduction of the certificate as a prop, Geller says the certificate is “actually not a birth certificate,” calling it a “certificate of live birth.” Host Eric Bolling insists that the certificate has been “Photoshopped” (i.e. altered using the graphics program Photoshop) because of a “green border” surrounding the certificate. Geller agrees that the border is “suspect.” Bolling says the certificate “opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.” Both Bolling and Geller appear to be basing their “analysis” on the quickly-debunked claim that the “layering” of the PDF image of the certificate “proves” it is a fake (see April 27, 2011). Fox contributor Monica Crowley says billionaire real estage mogul and television host Donald Trump “forced the president’s hand to the point where he actually produced this document that we’re talking about.” She says Obama took a “direct slam at Donald Trump” by calling those who continue to question the legitimacy of his birth “sideshows and carnival barkers.” However, Crowley says, “we’ve got this document produced today, which means President Obama zero, carnival barker one.” Guest Keith Ablow agrees with Crowley that Trump deserves the credit for “forcing” Obama to release the certificate. Bolling says that Obama’s timing in releasing the certificate—on the same day that Trump appears in New Hampshire as part of what some consider to be his preparations to enter the 2012 presidential campaign—is obviously an attempt to upstage Trump. Ablow says there is some as-yet unknown reason why Obama has not released this “long form” certificate until now (Ablow does not inform viewers that Hawaiian state law prohibits the “long form” certificate from being given to anyone, and that Obama needed to get a special dispensation from the Hawaiian State Department to be given a copy—see July 1, 2009). Crowley cites the theory of author and conspiracist Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, October 9, 2008, July 21, 2009, September 21, 2010, January 18, 2011, and March 27-28, 2011), who is about to release a book that will purport to prove Obama is not a citizen; “I think what Obama was trying to do today,” she says, “is preempt that, try to steal the thunder away from this book that’s coming out, so that nobody will pay attention to the Corsi book.” Bolling informs viewers that the wife and son of the doctor who signed the birth certificate in 1961, who has since passed away, “had no idea” that he signed the certificate. “If you gave birth to the president of the United States,” Bolling says, “don’t you think your family would know about it?” Geller concludes the segment by citing an array of Obama’s “life documents” that she says have been kept out of the public eye (see September 11, 2008, Around June 28, 2010, and April 26, 2011), and accuses the media of “protecting this man” from scrutiny. [Media Matters, 4/27/2011; Media Matters, 4/27/2011] A day later, the progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters notes that the doctor that signed the birth certificate died in 2003. Reporter Ben Dimiero will write: “Let that sink in for a second. At the time, Barack Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois. If the doctor had told his family before he died that he delivered the future president, that would have spawned a much more interesting conspiracy theory (he’s a wizard!). Apparently Eric Bolling thinks obstetricians give their families a list of the most interesting people they delivered—with a special section for ‘potential future presidents’—before they die.” [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] Two days later, Geller will label Obama “a b_stard, literally and figuratively” (see April 29, 2011).

Chris Matthews, hosting MSNBC’s Hardball, interviews columnists Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune and Eric Boehlert of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters about the conservative reaction to the recent release of President Obama’s “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011). Matthews focuses on a recent segment from Fox Business Channel featuring host Eric Bolling and his guest, conservative blogger Pamela Geller, where the two insisted that the newly released form is a fraud that has been “Photoshopped” (see April 27, 2011). Matthews calls their conspiracy theory “absolute garbage,” and Boehlert says Bolling “wants to prove he’s got the crazy niche” to replace the outgoing Glenn Beck on Fox News. Boehlert also notes that for weeks, Fox News hosts and guests have demanded that Obama release the “long form” certificate (see March 23, 2011, March 24, 2011, March 28-29, 2011, April 5, 2011, and April 24-25, 2011), “and yesterday he does, and you turn on Fox News: ‘How dare he release his long form birth certificate!‘… This is a game that’s being played, a very dishonest, hateful, and very disturbing game that the right-wing media is playing with American politics.” Matthews then plays a brief clip from a recent MSNBC broadcast where “birther” lawyer Orly Taitz tried, and failed, to raise new questions about Obama’s Social Security number (see April 27, 2011); Boehlert says: “She’s moving the goalposts, obviously. Man, that’s what conspiracists do, I mean, this is the textbook example of what we saw yesterday. As you said, it wasn’t just the hard-core professionals like her. It was the right-wing media, it was AM talk radio, it was a lot of the Internet, and obviously it was Fox News. Nobody apologized, nobody conceded the fact, they just kept spinning and spinning.” Matthews plays a clip of Donald Trump questioning Obama’s acceptance into Columbia University and Harvard Law School (see April 26, 2011). Page says in response: “I’ll tell you how black folks feel about it, it sounds like he’s saying [Obama is] an affirmative action baby (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 28, 2011).… You haven’t gotta be a black American just to be proud of the fact that this fellow was able to work his way up and make it through Harvard and make it to the White House, and… Trump is just pouring cold water on that whole thing, and I think now he’s just embarrassing the whole [Republican] Party.” Matthews says the crux of Trump’s argument about Obama’s college acceptance hinges on the fact that Obama is African-American, and says Trump would never use such an argument against a white political opponent. Boehlert says Trump is another cog in the organized effort to delegitimize Obama as a president (see April 27, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/28/2011] Bolling will indeed replace Beck on Fox News, as the co-host of a roundtable discussion show entitled The Five. [Real Clear Politics, 6/30/2011]

Pamela Geller, the conservative blogger who has for years attacked President Obama’s parentage and his citizenship (see July 20, 2008, October 24, 2008,August 4, 2009, and April 27, 2011), now calls Obama “a b_stard, literally and figuratively.” Geller’s characterization is part of a long tirade about Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., based on information about the elder Obama cited by the Arizona Independent, which obtained the Immigration and Naturalization Service file on Obama Sr. (see April 28, 2011). Geller accuses Obama’s father of “impossible philandering, multiple wives, and bad behavior,” says the elder Obama was forced to leave Harvard University and the United States itself, and blames his “polygamy” on his Muslim faith. She also says the portrait Obama has painted of his father in his first memoir, Dreams of My Father, is completely false, though Obama never knew his father and depicted his father in an unflattering light. Geller writes: “He was a terrible man—immoral and irresponsible. His treatment of women was incredibly callous and cruel—not to mention the abandoment of his children and his multiple wives. President Obama is indeed a bastard, literally and figuratively. What a horrible man. Dreams of My Father. Indeed. Perhaps this explains President Obama’s animus towards the United States” (see November 8, 2007, Before October 27, 2008, January 16, 2008, April 9, 2009, June 5, 2009, June 25, 2009, June 29, 2009, September 14, 2009, November 17, 2009, February 2, 2010, June 11, 2010, September 12, 2010, September 12, 2010 and After, September 12, 2010 and After, September 16, 2010, September 17, 2010, September 23, 2010, September 23-24, 2010, March 2011, April 15, 2011, and April 27, 2011). A New York Times analysis of the same information concludes that Obama Sr. had a tribal wife in Kenya at the time he married Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and explains: “We call this ‘polygamy’; they see it as moving on with life. First marriages fizzle out in Africa, as they do everywhere else. The difference is that culturally, legal divorce is very frowned upon: It’s viewed as shirking financial and familial responsibilities. Epidemiologists, who have studied this cultural pattern because of its impact on the spread of HIV, often say that Africans tend to have ‘concurrent’ relationships, while Americans have ‘consecutive’ ones. That’s a wild generalization, but the point is that Obama Sr. would not have viewed his first marriage back in Kenya as something disreputable. It clearly became worthy of investigation to school and immigration officials, though, after he started fooling around with white women.” Geller calls the hints of racism towards Obama Sr. ridiculous, and cites fellow conservative blogger Jack Cahill as providing “proof” that Obama Sr.‘s marriage to Dunham was possibly invalid, making Obama the “b_stard” that she accuses him of being. [Pamela Geller, 4/29/2011] The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters notes that Geller’s attack on Obama and his father is part of a new initiative by “birthers” to besmirch Obama by attacking his father (see April 29, 2011). [Media Matters, 4/29/2011]

Ordering

Time period

Email Updates

Receive weekly email updates summarizing what contributors have added to the History Commons database

Donate

Developing and maintaining this site is very labor intensive. If you find it useful, please give us a hand and donate what you can.Donate Now

Volunteer

If you would like to help us with this effort, please contact us. We need help with programming (Java, JDO, mysql, and xml), design, networking, and publicity. If you want to contribute information to this site, click the register link at the top of the page, and start contributing.Contact Us